Pioneers and Founders

Wonderful, too, had been the effect produced by the stirring of the sluggish waters of indifference.  The Society that had been with such difficulty established at home, was numbering multitudes of subscribers both in England and America; it had awakened a like spirit in other sects, and whereas no dissenting minister in London had at first taken up Carey’s cause, it had become a scandal for a minister not to subscribe to or promote missions to the heathen.  Missionary reports were everywhere distributed, young men aspired to the work, and American Universities did honour to the ability and scholarship of the pioneers of Serampore.

Mrs. Carey died on the 7th of December, 1807, having spent twelve years in a state of constant melancholy and often raving insanity.  Poor woman! she was from the first a victim to her husband’s aspirations, which she never understood.  There is something piteous in the cobbler’s daughter marrying the apprentice to keep on the business, and finding him a genius and a hero on her hands, starving, being laughed at, and at last carried off to a strange land and fatal climate, all without the least comprehension or sympathy for the cause, and her mind failing before the material prosperity came, which she might have regarded as compensation.

In 1807, when some progress had been made, the grant for the translation of the Scriptures was withdrawn; but the superintendents resolved to persevere on their own account, and at the same time to collect all the information in their power respecting the Christians in India, so as to be able to rouse the cold hearts at home to the perception that a real work was in progress.  For this purpose, Dr. Claudius Buchanan, the Provost of the College at Fort William, made an expedition of inquiry among the various Christians, and his little book, “Christian Researches,” brought much before the public at home, of which they had hitherto been ignorant.

Before his time the enormities of the worship of Jaghernauth, and the horrors of the car, beneath which human victims threw themselves, had hardly been realized; and his very effective style of writing brought into full prominence the atrocities of the Suttee, or burning of widows on the funeral pile, a custom with which it was supposed to be impossible to interfere, but which has been proved to be entirely a corrupt practice, unsanctioned by any ancient law, only encouraged by the Brahmins out of avarice.  Happily the present generation only knows of these atrocities as almost proverbial expressions, but when the century came in they were in full force.

It was Buchanan, too, who first revealed to the English the existence of those Nestorian Christians of St. Thomas, on the coast of Malabar, who had probably had no ecclesiastical intercourse with this country since the embassy of King Alfred, nine hundred years before.  He also brought into public notice the effect of Swartz’s labours, by describing a visit that he made to Tanjore, where he had a most kind reception from Serfojee, and greatly admired the numerous charitable foundations of that beneficent Rajah.  He also heard the services held in three languages in Swartz’s church, and was greatly struck, when the Tamul sermon began, by hearing a universal scratching and grating all round him.  This was caused, he found, by the iron pens upon the palmyra leaves upon which most of the native congregation were taking notes, writing nearly as fast as the minister spoke.  He also heard Sattianadem—now a white-haired old man—preach on the “Marvellous Light,” and he felt that a great man had verily left his impress on these districts.

Carey’s second marriage was curiously different from his first.  It was to a lady named Charlotte Rumohr, of noble extraction, belonging to a family of high rank, in the duchy of Schleswig.  She was small and slightly deformed, but of good abilities; she had been highly educated, and being generally a prisoner on a couch, she had read deeply in many languages.  She had come out to India in search of a warm climate, and residing at Serampore, had fallen under the influence of the missionaries, and had some years previously been admitted to their congregation by immersion.  For the first time, Dr. Carey now enjoyed a really happy home, with a lady equal to conversing with him after the labours of the day.

But this mission, though subsisting for some years longer, hardly affords many more events.  It was not without troubles.  At times came friendly support; at others, opposition from the authorities—the committee at home were sometimes ignorantly meddlesome, sometimes sordid in their fits of economy; insufficiently tested fellow-labourers came out and failed; promising converts fell away; the climate was one steady unrelaxing foe, which took victims out of every family: but all these things were as the dust of the highway, trials common to man, and only incident to the very position that had been so wondrously achieved, since the day when the poor Baptist cobbler was so peremptorily silenced for but venturing to hint at the duty of converting the heathen.

Lord Hastings’ government was far more friendly than any previous one, and the few notable events that befell the community are quickly numbered.  In 1821, they were visited by Swartz’s pupil, Serfojee, who was staying with the Governor-General, Lord Hastings, on his way to Benares, whither, strange and sad to say, he was on pilgrimage, though all the time showing full intellectual understanding of, and warm external affection for, the Christian faith.  He talked English easily, and showed much interest in all that was going on, but a heathen he still remained.

This visit only preceded by a few weeks the death of Mrs. Carey, after thirteen years’ marriage, the happiest of Dr. Carey’s life; but in another year he married a widow of forty-five, who was ready to nurse his now declining years.  That year 1822 was a year of much sorrow; the cholera, said to have first appeared in 1817, became very virulent.  The Hindoos viewed it as a visitation from the goddess of destruction, and held services to propitiate it, and when that had passed away, a more than usually fatal form of fever set in.  Krishnu-pal, the first convert, who had for twenty years been a consistent Christian, was one of the first to be taken away.  Dr. Carey himself, though exceedingly ill, recovered his former state of health, and continued his arduous labours, he being by this time the ablest philologist in India; but the little band had come to the time of life when “the clouds return after the rain,” and in 1823 Mr. Ward died of cholera.  For twenty-three years had the threefold cord between Carey, Marshman, and Ward, been unbroken.  They had lived together like brothers, alike in aim and purposes, each supplying what the other lacked; and the distress of the parting was terrible, especially to Dr. Marshman, who at the time of his friend’s illness was suffering from an attack of deafness, temporary indeed, but for some days total, so that he could only watch the final struggle without hearing a single word.

He wrote as if he longed to be with those whose toils and sorrows were at an end, but he still had much more to do.  In 1826, he visited England, partly for the sake of pleading with the Society at home, first begun on so small a scale by Carey, but which now numbered many members and disposed of large sums.  The committee, however, were often hard to deal with.  There were among them many men of good intentions, but without breadth of views, and used to small economies.  They listened to false reports, censured without sufficient information, pinched their missions, and dictated the management, so that to deal with them was but a vexation of spirit.  Indeed, such annoyances are inseparable from the very fact of the supplies and the government being in the hands of a body at a distance from the scene of action, and destitute of personal experience of the needs.

After much argument, the matter ended in the Serampore mission being separated from the General Society, as indeed it had become nearly self-supporting through the numerous schools which the talents of the members of it had been able to establish.  It was an unfortunate time, however, when the two men whose abilities had earned their present position were so far past the prime of life; and, in 1830, the failure of a great banking company both deprived them of a large part of their investments, and, by ruining numerous families, lessened the attendance at Dr. Marshman’s school.  Moreover, the American subscribers sent a most vexatious and absurd remonstrance against any part of their contributions for training young men to the ministry, being employed in teaching science.  “As if,” said Dr. Marshman, “youths in America could be educated for ministers without learning science.”

Another disaster was that, on Lord William Bentinck’s arrival in India in 1830, the finances of the Government were found to be in so unsatisfactory a state, that salaries were everywhere reduced, and that which Dr. Carey had derived from the college at Fort William was thus cut down from 1,000 rupees per month to 500.  At this time, the missions and preachers dependent on Serampore required 1,500l. a year for their support, and only 900l. was to be had, and this when both Marshman and Carey were seventy years of age, and still were toiling as hard as ever.

There were other troubles, too, as to who was the owner of the buildings, whether the Baptist Society, or the missionaries as trustees, and as having paid a large portion of the price.  A great inundation of the Hooghly had nearly settled the question by washing the whole away.  As it was, it did much damage, and destroyed the beautiful botanical garden that had for twenty years been Dr. Carey’s delight.  Finally the whole of the right of Marshman and Carey to the buildings was sold to the Society, for a much less amount than they had paid from their own pockets; but they were to occupy them rent free for the rest of their lives.

The trouble and anxiety consequent on this question, which had been of many years’ standing, had greatly impaired Dr. Marshman’s strength both of body and mind.  Morbid attacks of depression came on, during which he wandered about, unable to apply himself so much as even to write a letter, though in the intervals he was both cheerful and full of activity.  Dr. Carey’s health was likewise failing, and, with no formed illness, he gradually sank, and died on the 9th of June, 1834, in his seventy-third year.

To him belongs the honour of the awakening of the missionary spirit in England.  Yet, as an individual preacher and teacher, he does not seem to have had much power.  His talent was for language and philology; his perfections were faith and perseverance.  In these he was a giant; in everything else, whether as a cobbler, schoolmaster, indigo-planter, nay, even as father of a family, he was a failure: but his steady, faithful purpose enabled him so to use that one talent as to make him the pioneer and the support as well as the example of numbers better qualified for the actual work than himself.

His loss left Dr. Marshman alone, and suffering from melancholy more and more, as well as much harassed by difficulties as to the resources, and by captious complaints from home.  In 1836, a great shock was given to his nerves by the danger of his daughter.  She was the wife of Lieutenant Henry Havelock, a young officer, who, deeply impressed by Dr. Marshman’s piety, had joined his congregation, and who was destined to become in after years one of the most heroic and able of the defenders of the British cause in India.  During his absence, she and her three children had been left at Landour, when their bungalow caught fire in the middle of the night, and blazed up with a rapidity due to its light, dry materials.  She rushed out with her baby in her arms, but in crossing the verandah tripped and fell, losing her hold of the child.  She was dragged away by a faithful native servant, who likewise snatched out her two eldest boys, but the poor baby was lost in the flames, and she herself was so much injured and overwhelmed by the alarm and grief, that, when her husband arrived, her state was almost hopeless, and he wrote a letter preparing her father to hear of her death.  From some untoward accident, no more tidings reached Serampore for three days, and to spirits that had already lost their balance the suspense was fatal.  The aged father wandered about the house in a purposeless manner, sometimes standing gazing along the road through the Venetian blinds, sometimes talking incoherently; and when at last the intelligence arrived that Mrs. Havelock was out of danger, though his joy and thankfulness were ecstatic, the effects of these three days were irremediable; he was hardly ever seen to smile again, could take no part in the renewed discussions with the Baptist Society, although his mind and memory were still clear.  He died on the 5th of December, 1837, just as the Serampore mission had been re-united to the General Baptist mission.

“There had been but few men at Serampore, but they were all giants,” was said of them by one of the dignitaries of the Church and assuredly it was a wonderful triumph, that a shoe-maker, a schoolmaster, and a printer should in thirty-eight years not only have aroused the missionary spirit in England, but have, by their resolution and talent, established thirty-three stations for the preaching of Christianity in India; while at the time of the death of the last survivor, forty-nine ministers were in union with them, half of whom were natives of Hindostan, and around each of the elder stations was a fair proportion of converts.  Still more amazingly, these self-educated men had, by their accurate knowledge and deep study, become most eminent authorities in matters of language and philology; and by their usefulness had actually compelled a prejudiced Government to depend on them for assistance, and thus to support the work for which alone they cared.  Never were the words more completely fulfilled than in them, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.”

The reverses that chequered their wonderful success were not the more interesting difficulties of wild country, or persecuting heathen, but troubles with an obstructive Government, and with the Society at home, which endeavoured to rule them without understanding them.  These vexations are inseparable from the conditions of Societies trying to govern from home instead of letting the management be carried on by a head upon the spot.

CHAPTER VI.  THE JUDSON FAMILY

We must turn to an important offshoot from the Serampore mission, which assumed extensive proportions and a character of its own, chiefly in consequence of American zeal.  Here, be it observed, was the first ground attempted by modern missions (not Roman Catholic) which belonged to an independent sovereign.

The great Burmese Empire, roughly speaking, occupies the Eastern India peninsula, being separated from that of Hindostan by the Brahmapootra river.  The mountainous formation of the country, its indented coast, and numerous rivers render it fertile, and the hills contain many valuable metals and beautiful precious stones.

The inhabitants are of the Mongolian race, short, stout, active, and brown, with a good deal of ingenuity in arts and manufactures, but not equal to the Chinese, their neighbours.  Their language is monosyllabic, their religion Buddhist, their government a despotic empire, and at the time the mission was entered upon they had had little intercourse with strangers, but their women were not secluded, were not wholly uneducated, and were treated with consideration.

Buddha is regarded as a manifestation of Vishnu—the Hindoos say, to delude his enemies; the Buddhists, to bring a new revelation.  Gautama was the almost deified being who spread the knowledge of Buddhism, about 500 b.c.  In different countries the religion has assumed different forms, but it is nearly co-extensive with the Mongolian race, and the general features are the rejection of the Vedas and of most of the Hindoo myths, faith in the divinity of Buddha, and hope that the individual personality will be entirely absorbed in his essence, the human being lost in the Deity.  Five laws of virtue must be observed, ten kinds of sin avoided; and the Buddhist expects that transgressions will be punished by the transmigration of his soul into some inferior creature, whence he will rise by successive stages into another trial as a man, and gradually improving by the help of contemplation, and of a sublime state of annihilation of all self-consciousness, may become fit for his final absorption into the Godhead.  There is an extensive priesthood, called Lamas, who live in a state of celibacy in dwellings not at all unlike monasteries; and, in effect, so much in their practices seems to parody the ceremonies of Christianity that the Portuguese thought them invented by the devil for the very purpose.  However, there is no doubt that Buddhism inculcates a much purer morality than the religion of Brahma, and far higher aims.  In Burmah, however, the idea of the eternity of the Deity had evidently been lost, and Gautama had practically usurped the place that the higher Buddhists gave to Brahma.  Indeed, though the true Buddhist system looks to the absorption in the Deity,—Nirvana, as it is called,—the popular notion, as received in Burmah and corrupted by less refined minds, made it into what was either absolute nonentity or could not be distinguished from it, so that the ordinary Burman’s best hope for the future was of nothing but annihilation.

There was originally a Burman Empire, but it had become broken up, and the territories of Ava, Pegu, and Siam were separated, though Ava claimed them all, and owned a semi-barbarous magnificent court, with many gradations of dignitaries, sending out Viceroys to the different provinces and towns.

When in 1807 strong opposition was made by Sir George Barlow’s government to the landing of the two Baptist missionaries, Robinson and Chater, the former obtained forbearance on account of his wife’s health, but the latter was obliged to embark; and, rather than return to England, he chose a vessel bound for Rangoon, a city at the mouth of the river Irrawaddy, the nearest Burmese harbour.  His was to be a reconnoitring expedition to discover the condition of the Burmese Empire, the progress that Roman Catholic missions were making there, and the possibility of undertaking anything from the centre of Serampore.  Another missionary, named Mardon, went with him.  They were well received by the European merchants resident at Rangoon, and returned with an encouraging report.  It was decided that the attempt should be made; and as Mr. Mardon did not feel equal to the undertaking, fifteen days were set apart as a time of private prayer for direction who should be chosen in his stead.

It was Felix Carey, then nearly twenty-two, who volunteered to go with Mr. Chater, of whom he was very fond.  His father was unwilling to send him, not only on account of his youth, but because he was very valuable in the printers’ work, and had an unusual amount of acquaintance with Sanskrit and Bengalee, so that he could hardly be spared from the translations; but the majority of the council at Serampore were in favour of his going, and after a long delay, in consequence of the danger British trading vessels were incurring from French privateers from the Isle of France, they set sail and arrived at Rangoon early in the year 1808.

There they built themselves a house, and obtained a good deal of favour from the gentleness and amiability of Mr. Chater, and from young Carey’s usefulness.  He had regularly studied medicine for some years in the hospital at Calcutta, and his skill was soon in great request, especially for vaccination, which he was the first to introduce.  His real turn was, however, for philology, and he was delighted to discover that the Pali, the sacred and learned language of Burmah, was really a variety of the Sanskrit, cut down into agreement with the Mongolian monosyllabic speech.  He began, with the assistance of a pundit, to compile a grammar, and to make a rough beginning of a translation of the Scripture, a work indeed in which the Serampore people were apt to be almost too precipitate, not waiting for those refinements of knowledge which are needful in dealing with the shades of meaning of words of such intense importance and delicate significancy.  But on their principles, they could do nothing without vernacular Bibles, and they had not that intense reverence and trained scholarly appreciation which made Martyn spend his life on the correctness of a single version, rather than send it forth with a flaw to give wrong impressions.

Neither does Felix Carey seem to have been a missionary in anything but that bent which is given by training and family impulse.  He delighted in languages, but rather as an end than a means; and though he did what the guiding fathers at Serampore required of him, it was as a matter of course, not with his whole heart.  In the meantime, the fact of Mr. Chater being a married man occasioned difficulties.  Like their kinsmen the Chinese, the Burmese much objected to the residence of foreign females within their bounds; and when Mr. Chater obtained leave to bring his wife, she was so forlorn that he was obliged to seek for another station, and, receiving an invitation to Ceylon, left Felix alone, except for his marriage with a young woman of European extraction, but born in Burmah.

Soon after a dispute arose between the British and Burmese governments, and two English ships of war appeared off Rangoon.  The native authorities wished the young missionary to act as interpreter, and on his refusal he was accused of being a spy, and was forced to take refuge on board one of the British ships where he remained for two months before the differences were adjusted, and he was allowed to return on condition that he should not refuse his services as interpreter another time.  In the October of 1812 he came home to Serampore to print his Burmese grammar and Gospel of St. Matthew, and not only did this, but carried a press back with him to Rangoon.  A youth who was sent from the congregation at Calcutta to co-operate with him proved unfit for the work, and was advised to return to secular business; but in the meantime, the person who was, above all others, to be identified with the Burmese mission, had heard the call and was on his way.

This was Adoniram Judson, a native of New England, the eldest son of the minister of Malden, in Massachusetts, born in 1788, and bred up first at a school near home, and afterwards at Brown University.  His acuteness and cleverness from infancy were great, especially in arithmetic and mathematics.  During his studies, he met with a clever and brilliant friend who had imbibed the deistical teaching of the French Revolution, and infected him with it, and he came home at seventeen the winner of all the honours and prizes that the College afforded, but announcing himself to his parents as a decided infidel!  The pastor treated him with stern displeasure, and argued hotly with him, but young Adoniram was the cleverer man, and felt his advantage.  His mother’s tears and entreaties were less easy to answer, and the thought of them dwelt with him, do what he would, when he set out on a sort of tour through the surrounding States.  On his journey, he stopped at a country inn, and was told, with much apology, that there was no choice but to give him a room next to that of a young man who was so ill that he could scarcely live till morning.  In fact, Adoniram’s rest was broken by the groans of the dying man and the footsteps of the nurses, and there—close to the shadow of death—his infidelity, which had been but pride of intellect and fashion, began to quail, as the thought of the future haunted him.  Morning came; all was still.  He asked after his fellow-lodger, and heard that he was dead.  He asked his name.  It was no other than the very youth who had staggered his faith.

The shock changed his whole tone.  He could not bear to continue his journey, but turned back to Plymouth, determined to prove to himself what was indeed truth; and, while deeply studying the evidences of Christianity, he supported himself by keeping a school and writing educational books on grammar and arithmetic.  His mind was soon thoroughly made up, as, indeed, his aberrations had been only on the surface, and he became very anxious to enter the Theological College at Andover, Massachusetts.  This belonged to the most earnest of the Congregationalists, and evidence of personal conversion and piety was required from the candidates; but, in his case, the professors were satisfied, and he entered on his course of study, which included Hebrew.  In the last year of his studies there he fell in with Claudius Buchanan’s “Star in the East,” and the perusal directed his whole soul to the desire of missionary labour.  His mind was harassed night and day with the thought of longing to do something for the enlightenment of the millions in Asia; and, meeting with Symes’ “Burmese Empire,” his thoughts turned especially in that direction.  It was a quiet steady purpose, though he was slow of communicating it; until, one evening at home, his father began throwing out hopes and hints of some great preferment, and his mother and sister smiled complacently, as if they were in the secret.  Adoniram begged for an explanation, since it was possible their plans might not coincide, to which his father replied there was no fear, and told him that the minister of the biggest church in Boston wished for him as a colleague.  “So near home,” said the delighted mother.  He could not bear to answer her, but, when his sister chimed in, he turned to her, saying, “No, sister, I shall never live in Boston; I have much farther to go;” and then, steadily and calmly, but fervidly, he set forth the call that he felt to be upon him.  How different a communication from that which he had made two years before!  No doubt his family so felt it, for, though his mother and sister shed many tears, neither they nor his father offered a word of opposition.